The project aims to understand why some
farmers adopt or do not adopt soil management improvement practices. The first
phase which identifies the social drivers that influences adoptability has been
completed.

Preliminary findings have shown that there are
a series of factors that influence adoptability.

Continuity
of the farm – adoptability
is influenced by phases of farm expansion, consolidation and improvement, with
each involving different strategies for inter-generational management of soil.

Trustworthiness
and validation – trust in the
soil improvement technologies and practice, and who is promoting it, is a key
consideration. Farmers will more likely consider adoption of a technology or
practice if it has been evaluated locally and is endorsed by trusted
non-commercial sources.

Agronomists
as intermediaries – local
agronomists have an important role in translating soil science research in ways
that are relevant to local farming conditions. Agronomists are often highly
trusted and as such play a central role in helping farmers ‘make sense’ of soil
improvement technologies and practices, but they are often disconnected from
research organisations and rely more on local networks of farmers and practical
learning across these.

Looking to
local innovators – farmers rely
on ‘leading’ farmers in a region testing approaches at scale before they
consider adopting or adapting them. This means that a few early innovators take
a risk for the larger group, yet they are not usually considered as integral to
agricultural innovation.

Relevance to
locally-defined needs and challenges –
a key issue across all farming groups is how to manage soil variability across
space and depth. On-farm trials in the local area are crucial for
farmers in assessing the capacity of soil improvement technologies and
practices to manage soil variability issues, and these will often require
maintenance of long-term trial sites.

Based on the analysis of this data, the
project team believes that there needs to be a shift in emphasis from identifying
individual farm level “barriers” to adoption, towards supporting the processes
of innovation, trialling and learning within the greater farming networks.

Key points identified are:

Building
trust across networks – develop
research priorities for soil improvement that are driven by, and support, local
trials conducted by farming groups.

Co-development
of knowledge – work with
farming groups to ensure that outputs developed are relevant to locally-defined
soil management needs and challenges.

Using
agronomists as ‘sensemakers’ –
work with trusted local agronomists in translating data so that it makes sense
to farmers and can be applied on-farm (data can take the form of research
findings, or information generated from technologies such as variable rate
technology or grid sampling).

Utilising
farming groups as a trusted source – use locally respected innovators – those who are regarded by their peers as
having achieved improved soils through persistence and experimentation – as
‘change champions’.

Utilising
farming groups to promote caring for soil as critical to farm continuity – create/promote communities of practice where
farmers can discuss and share stories about how they care for their land and
soil – the experimentation, challenges and achievements.

This project serves to highlight the
importance of involving farmer groups in the identification of priorities,
development of proposals, implementation of projects, interpretation of results
and communication of findings.

The Soil CRC recognises that these principles are critical to increased adoption of soil improvement techniques and technologies and is attempting to achieve a meaningful two-way dialogue between scientists and farmers in its project activities.

The next phase of the research will develop
criteria of adoptability, refined through a second round of workshops with
landholders and regional farming groups later this year, that will enable farming
knowledge and regional-scale soil priorities to be better integrated into soil
research and extension.